Silver and Glass
by Laurelin173
Summary: Vignette. Musings of a really old guy. "Then your carefully constructed reality quietly falls to pieces, and you must pick those pieces up and begin again. Keep what you like; discard what you don’t. Build yourself as you think you should be."


Usual disclaimers apply. RR appreciated.

* * *

It's nearing midnight as I pull my chair up and sit down at the computer. I'm still for a moment, hands poised over the keyboard, wondering briefly what I'm doing.

I have no idea what I'm about to write. I have no idea why I feel the urge to write it—whatever "it" may be. But here I am, and here I go.

I remember once, long ago, I knew what I was about. I knew what I was doing, and I knew why I was here—and when you know that, you know everything there is to know. It gives you power, that knowledge does, and no one can take that power away from you.

Which is not to say that that power can't be lost. It can. Oh, it can. When you lose that knowledge, you lose the power that goes with it. Then you're lost in the dark, wandering aimlessly, watching the world continue on as you stay in the same place. Stationary. Stagnant. A permanent fixture. A piece of furniture. Part of the background. Nothing more.

I no longer know who I am.

I could go back and read the literature, the endless journals and diaries I've kept over the years, to try and rediscover this thing that I've lost. Sanskrit, Egyptian, Greek, Latin... I always told myself I wrote so I wouldn't forget. History is recorded by the winners; but I recorded it the way it was. What I had for breakfast that day, what my mood was when I awoke, whether it was raining or sunny or snowing. The way it happened. How it went down. Memory is an imperfect thing; even back then, I knew that, and I knew that if I didn't record life as it happened, I would remember it incorrectly, or worse, not at all. They say that once time has gone, you can't get it back... I'm not so sure about that. What I do know is that each journal entry is a moment frozen in time.

But what I was then is not what I am now.

I can hide in a character. I can create a persona. I can present someone to the world and pretend to be him. I may even convince a few people. But every so often, you come across the rare individual who senses that things may not be as they seem. Then your carefully constructed reality quietly falls to pieces, and you must pick those pieces up and begin again. Keep what you like; discard what you don't. Build yourself as you think you should be. You're the six million dollar man: we can rebuild him. We can make him better. Bigger. Stronger. Faster. We have the technology.

It used to be so much easier to keep track of yourself...

It didn't matter if you didn't age. If you didn't die. If you stayed the same. People believed in the unbelievable: gods, goddesses, daemons, devils, faeries, magicks, and so on... Nowadays, you can't stay in one place too long, or people will start to talk. If someone sees you take a death, you have to pack up and move out. Nietzsche was the one who finally had the brass to say what everyone had been thinking for years.

My attention is wandering. If that isn't symptomatic of my life, I don't know what is.

I'm trying to figure out a way to get myself back on track, but I just can't do it. I don't know why. I've tried meditating—I know every trick in the book—but nothing is bringing me back to the matter at hand.

I suppose the problem is that I don't know what the matter at hand is.

Where can I go to see what I am now? Will a mirror do the trick? Such a deceptively simple solution... just a piece of glass backed with silver. That's all. If it were as easy as that, my troubles would be long over.

It's twelve thirty in the morning. I am no closer to arriving at a solution.

I've been around a long time. For the past several thousand years, I have lived life as a chameleon, always keeping my head down, trying not to advertise my presence, and so on and so forth—a real live-and-let-live kind of philosophy. Or rather, more of a keep-yourself-alive kind of philosophy. My point is that...

... That I don't want to be forgotten.

I remember a time once when I was the spotlight, the center of attention. I won't say whether or not the attention was good or bad; if there's one thing I know, it's that everything comes in shades of grey, and precisely what that shade of grey is depends on your point of view. But attention was something I had plenty of. Fame, even. Notoriety. Then everything changed, as it always does, and I was happy not to have the attention I formerly had.

Have I always written my journals for the benefit of my own personal memories?

No.

I've written them for the benefit of the memories of others.

I want them to know who I am.

Can you see the real me... doctor... doctor?

I used to be a doctor. Or I said I was one, anyway. Never had the credentials for it to be legal; but then, back then, there was no such thing. Then some hotshot had to come along and invent medical school and the rest, as they say, is...

Well, you know what it is.

There I go again. Again. Again. Like a broken record.

Record.

That's what I'm doing.

I'm leaving a record.

But am I leaving a record of me as I am... or me as I _believe_ I am?

That's what it boils down to. A good old-fashioned identity crisis. You'd think by this point, we would have figured out a solution to identity crises, a cure-all, a fail-safe... but no. No matter how advanced we all think we are, we still can't puzzle out the simplest problems on our own. We need someone else to show us who we were, who we are, who we might become. Mirrors... mirrors are simply other people.

Or maybe it's not "simply" at all.

By nature, we must be loners. All players of a Game. Every man for himself. There can be only one. And we have all the baggage that goes with it. But we also need others to show us ourselves. Quite a quandary, it is.

It's a wonder we're not all entirely bloody nuts.

We live forever. We live in shadows. We live in secret. We hide in broad daylight. We have no friends. We have no lovers. We pretend we do; but we all know that in the end, we are alone. We are nothing... but alone.

And it is this that will kill us all.

The Game? It's not enough. You live. You fight. You win. You go on. One day, if you're lucky, maybe you'll be the only one left. Congratulations, you've won!... Now what? What then? One man left with the power to rule the world, for good or for ill... but what's the point? What can one man do with all that power? Why would anyone _need_ it? I mean, I've heard of power-hungry people—I've _seen_ power-hungry people, lived _through_ them and their times—but honestly: once you've gotten to the top, where else is there to go?

I'm still somewhere in the middle. I'm not at the top. I wouldn't want to be. But I'm not at the bottom either... I'm stranded somewhere in between, walking the line, continuing to push on, still searching for... whatever it is that we all spend our days searching for.

Maybe that's what it is. Maybe I've put my finger on it, finally. Or maybe I haven't. Maybe I've just come full circle, ending back exactly where I started, having gotten nowhere at all. Maybe that's why I continue to sit here, why I continue to type, why I continue to wonder about all the things that I know, all the things that I don't know, all the things that I may never know. Perhaps we're not supposed to have the answers to all these questions. If we have the questions, but not the answers, we have something worth looking for. Something worth wondering about. Something worth digging for.

Something unresolved that spurs us onward.

It's one a.m.

So who am I?

I'm just a guy.

I'm someone trying to find himself.

I'm a traveler. A transient. A nomad.

I'm nothing.

I'm everything.

I'm a guy trying to find his way through this messy place we call the world.

And I'm a guy who doesn't give up.

I'm just a guy.


End file.
